


don't need candles or cake

by plinys



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Birthday Sex, F/M, The Framework Universe (Marvel)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-17 08:46:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11848068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: For a moment he feels like he was a boy of eighteen, not a man of thirty.





	don't need candles or cake

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JackEPeace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackEPeace/gifts), [ophvelias](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ophvelias/gifts).



> so the fraida squad is doing birthday fic swaps in honor of leopold fitz turning 30 today, i got framework verse so here we go??

His birthday is meant to be a cause for celebration. 

Certainly the amount of pomp and circumstance that does into an occasion such as this one, proves as much. The glittering lights, the paparazzi with their cameras, the gathered crowd of Hydra elite ready to trip over themselves in an attempt to earn his favor. Ophelia somewhere in the crowd, exchanging pleasantries with unimportant people when he’d rather she was just by his side.

He remembers other birthdays younger than he was now. 

A celebration much like this one, the lights seeming too much and wondering if he realized deserved all of this.

A laboratory, the clock hitting midnight and an absent minded comment not realizing the date until just that moment.

A dorm room at the Academy, the women he’s started to fall in love with straddling him her voice cracking over his name.

A dinner table with his father at the head, pointing out that it’s been another year without him accomplishing anything. 

A candle in a lopsided cupcake, a woman with a voice he barely remembers and features that have blurred together over the years telling him to make a wish. 

An underground base with lights that flickered, a cup of tea in a chipped mug and a woman whose features seem like a ghost as she says - 

“Leopold?” 

He is drawn out of his thoughts by the sight and sound of her, returned from wherever she had been, pressed now against his side. She’s beautiful, the only birthday present that he wants, wrapped in a green satin dress that he hopes he will get to rip from her body sooner rather than later. 

Leopold follows the curve of her neck, down the v cut of her dress, the swell of her breasts there just hidden from view.

He needs her, much more than he needs this party, this celebration of his birth.

He’s thirty, now officially. Old enough that he should be able to resist for a few more hours, surly. There had been something to be said about being twenty-nine, the way it had sounded, he was accomplished at twenty-nine, the last vestiges of being considered a prodigy clinging to him. 

Now....

It is silly to think that one day has changed that. He doesn’t physically feel older. His body feels unchanged like kept in a quiet stasis, locked in this form for all eternity.

And still. 

He feels the year like a heavyweight in his chest. 

He feels so far from the young man who cheekily asked for birthday sex before pulling Ophelia down onto his dorm room bed. 

“You’re worrying,” Ophelia says, though she does not rub at the lines on his forehead like she would do in private, instead she threads their hands together and squeezes his lightly. “You shouldn’t be worrying today.” 

She sounds concerned. 

Just the slightest tone, but he can read her emotions well now. Hidden as they may be, forced down by past experience or by a deeper condition. It does not matter, because he knows her, he knows what the concern in her voice means.

The concern that has been there for the past week, when she woke up a few nights ago, being the one to check his pulse, having dreamed that he died. He hadn’t known she was capable of dreaming until that moment, but he had seen the fear in her eyes that night.

And this whole week she’d been watching him, concerned, taking care of everything, asking if he was feeling well or had noticed anything different.

He didn’t ask before.

And now is not the right time to ask. 

But he knows that it will give them an excuse to leave here, that if he implies he’s not feeling well she’ll drop the pretense of caring about the party, going back up to the penthouse, away from the fake smiles and false pleasantries from people that he does not care about.

He says, “I don’t want to be here,” and feels bad when her concern increases. He wants to apologize. 

Because this is Ophelia. 

Ophelia,  who loves him.

Ophelia, who always seems to want to make sure that everything is perfect for him.

Ophelia, who seems to have aged ten years in the past week while he has - 

“We’ve stayed long enough,” she agrees, though there’s still something there in her tone. 

This would usually be the part where Ophelia makes their excuses to leave, but this time she does no such thing. Holding steady to his hand and moving through the crowds, away from the people gathered, those whole salute as they walk by, and out into a silent hallway. 

It is not the penthouse, where he wants to be. 

Not their bed, that he wants to push her down onto. 

Not a hotel room, with his comm still in his ear and - 

He needs to get out of his head, so he kisses her there in the hallway, using their joined hands to tug her close to her. To press their lips together hot and desperate, and needing to feel her, to feel real, to feel grounded to this moment and this place. Not lost in his mind and memories and insecurities and half broken thoughts that don’t feel real.

No.

All he can focus on is her. The way she opens her mouth for him without any hesitation, the way she presses desperately up against him needing more contact, the way the satin of her dress feels against her hands.

He still wants to rip if off of her.

Only stopping as she pulls back from him saying, “Don’t,” and “Wait until we’re home” like a promise of more. 

Instead she guides him hands to the zip on the back, a zip he tugs down without much care for being delicate about it. Watching a second later as the fabric slides down her body gathering at her feet, exposing those breasts that had caught his attention earlier, a pair of dark lace panties, and long legs. 

For a second he just admires her. 

Because this is his present, the only thing he wanted for his birthday.

The only thing he’s ever wanted. 

The only thing he will ever want.

“I need,” he says, because that’s all he can manage, but she knows. Of course, she knows because she’s kissing him again, switching their positions, so that she is the one pressed against the hallway wall, one hand running through his hair, softly against the sides of his over worked mind, while her other hand undoes his belt with precision, as she has for years. 

He gasps against her lips when her hand is on him. Her long fingers curling around his length. He nearly loses it right there, falling apart at the softest of her touches, like he was a boy of eighteen, not a man of thirty.

He suddenly needs to be inside of her.

It’s the only thing that will do, so he brushes her hands aside, reaching down to tug her lace panties, not off, but just to the side, just enough to get access to her. To slip inside of her like he's done thousands of times before. A constant in his life for years. 

Her. 

She’s always been his constant. 

And he knows her.

Years of experience has taught him just the ways she likes to be touched, hard enough to hurt anyone else, hard enough to bruise, the only way she seems to be able to feel anything, her face shifting into the closest thing to pleasure that he’s ever seen when his fingers dig into her hips, a moan spilling from her lips. 

She tells him, “Harder,” between gasps and moans.

He tells her, “Louder,” between touches and thrusts. 

They both comply. Her moans loud, calling out his name, desperate and just for him, even though it’s loud enough to echo through the hallway, echo back to the party. He imagines all of them hearing it, all the gathered crowd that pretends to like him on his special day, hearing the only woman that truly does, proclaim her need for him for all to hear. 

He wants them to hear it. 

To know what he’s left them all for. 

He sucks a bruise into the side of her neck, one that will be impossible to cover, one that will linger for days exposed even by the high collar of her Madame Hydra uniform. 

She moans louder as he does this. Clutches onto him, a mix of, “Yes,” and “Please,” and “Leopold” and “More” and “More” and “More”. 

He gives her more. 

He gives her so much more. 

Until there’s nothing else he can think about.

Nothing but Ophelia. No birthday party, no fake smiles, no head aches he can’t explain, nothing. But being here with her in this moment. 

Losing himself, holding onto her as he comes sooner than expected, is not as much of a surprise as it could be. He rocks his hips into her a few more times, following it through before he cannot anymore, before a sort of bone deep exhaustion takes over him, and they’re just standing there, in this hallway away from the party, his head resting against her shoulder, as he tries to remember how to breath. 

It’s there, her hands holding tight onto his suit jacket, holding him tight to her, that she says, “Happy Birthday,” soft almost, a sort of afterthought. 

Barely anything at all, but it is. 

It’s enough.

It’s all he wanted for his birthday.

Well, almost all.

He still has an image of her in his mind, against the white sheets of their bed, getting to properly  _ unwrap  _ his present. But that will have to wait a little bit longer. 

“I’m going to call our driver.”

“Don’t you want to say goodbye to everyone,” Ophelia asks, but it’s half hearted. 

When he meets her eyes, her expression matches his own, mirth there on that familiar face.

“Fuck everyone else, it’s my birthday.” 

  
  



End file.
